How many miles per year do you drive your D?

[DaraSue]

I was feeling kind of bummed out that the car I was assured by the seller would provide me many years of trouble-free driving has now been in the shop for half the time I've had it, but then it dawned on me... I've probably put as many miles on it in the month it was in my possession as a lot of owners do in a year or more.

So for statistical purposes, I'm curious, how much do we all drive our cars? (I realize self-selecting sample bias may skew the results compared to all the owners out there who have one in the garage but aren't gung-ho enough to be all over internet forms about it, lol. But I'm still curious...)

(Option 10 may be slightly ridiculous but considering there's at least one out there with 1,000,000 miles on it I guess it's theoretically possible...)

[mluder]

To answer your main question... IN the 5+ years I've owned the car I typically put about 2500 miles a year on my car.

To speak to your other statement, I found a similar circumstance. I bought my car with less than 8,000 miles on it (about 5 years ago as previously said) and the previous owner had let the car sit for the last 10 years or so. The point is, in 30 years it had barely been driven. Beyond the work necessary to restore a long idle car back to running state, what I found was once I started regularly driving the car things started breaking. I chalked it up to all the things that would normally have failed through 30 year of routine use on ANY car started breaking once I started using the car regularly. In short, your experience matches mine. I'll be curious to see what other say.

Cheer
Steven

[DrJeff]

At purchase my car had 25.5k miles on it. From the inspection log it looked like most of those happened in the early 90's with spits and spats of driving after that. I got straight into fixing things (reverse light, steering shaft bushing, window regulator, door locks, vacuum mode switch, relays) and enjoyed driving the car at the same time... being sure not to do anything that took it off the road for too long. I did get unexpectedly stuck with refurbishing the clutch system (master and slave), but I avoided having to do much on the engine.

Then the big project started (electric conversion) - so now off the road 2+ years (moved house too). What I've been very pleased about as I've taken apart and rebuilt almost everything is just how well the majority of the parts have done over 35 years. Other than the mess caused by fluid leaks, things look surprisingly good. Probably the most beat up looking part was the front lower control arms - now replaced with stainless. I'm pretty sure the PO for 26 years kept the car garaged the whole time, with very occasional driving.

Once the conversion project is finished (or at least 80% done with all the critical systems in place - and in Houston A/C is critical year-round), I hope to get the car back to the concurrent 80:20 plan, 80% driving and 20% projects.

Jeff

[Jonathan]

I got my car nine years ago. Nine years ago yesterday, as a matter of fact.

I don't have my handy dandy, large, and somewhat ridiculous all encompassing Excel spreadsheet tracking everything related to my car at my finger tips... or I could give you the real specific numbers. So from memory...

I have one season in the 2,500 - 5,000 mile range and that was in 2014 and included driving to DCS in Ohio.

I "think" my first two seasons (maybe three) were in the 500 - 1,000 mile range. I had my car for two days back in 2007 and then it spent the next nine months at the mechanic's. No joke, nine months. So don't feel bad. The two early seasons I was still figuring things out like a wonky auto trans shift computer, mushy brake master cylinder and other fun things so I didn't feel too confident driving the car back then.

Once all that was behind me though, each season since has been in the 1,000 - 2,500 mile range.

I agree with you both on "catching up" with break/fix stuff once you start actually driving it. I will say that in the last few seasons, I find myself choosing to work on areas somewhat proactively rather than only once something breaks. This year specifically, I have spent very little on parts and fixing things. It's a nice place to be in. My monster sized parts ordering days are over it seems. I had a ton of little misc things not working on the car originally and I think the total for parts I ordered that were simply missing is up around $2,000. Now I am in that maintenance mode only for the most part with fluids, filters, belts, seals, etc. It was a long time coming though.

What you might find from hearing people's experiences is how important it is to know how well your car was stored. I think if you find a car that the owner cared about and for when it was put away, you can improve a lot of these expenses and problems over the car that just sat neglected because no one gave a sh!t.

Anywho, I am right around 1,500 miles for this season and about 11,000 miles total since I got it.

[Josh]

I average about 6000 miles per summer.

This year was my most traveled, at around 9000 miles. And I only had the car on the road for 3 months!

[David T]

You also have to keep in mind, some of us are limited in the amount of miles we can use the car any one year by classic/historic plates and/or insurance. Some insurance companies allow you to average it out over multiple years.

[Rich W]

Not sure if Klaus will chime in here or not, but you can add the 3 DeLorean World Tour cars to either Option 7 or Option 8 in the last 12 months,
depending upon if you want to add it up by calendar year or the past 12 months. IIRC, all 3 DeLoreans drove over 26K miles since Sept. 2015.

As for me personally, I drove over 1,000 miles on 3 DeLoreans in the past 15 months or so, including both the 2015 and 2016 DCS Raffle Cars.

[Rich W]

Not sure if Oliver and Terry Holler will chime in here or not, but their DeLorean is almost always in the middle of the Option 8 group,
for at least the past decade and a half. If they have not crossed the 700,000 mile mark yet, they will be close by the end of 2016.

IIRC, they usually put on between 25,000 and 35,000 miles per year (not sure how many extra miles were put on in BTTF Year 2015).
I recall hearing (at DCS 2016) that Oliver and Terry were actually "home" a few times in 2015, but not more than a few weeks, total.

It's always interesting to find out what DeLorean parts that Oliver has worn out that almost every other DeLorean owner has not done.

[DMCVegas]

When I daily drive it, at least 10,000 per year. It's been a while since that time though since it's been in storage.

The only other vehicles I've ever had that have come close to the lack of problems with my DeLorean (not counting neglect as part of the restoration and previous mechanic's poor repairs), have been my old Hyundai and my current F-150. Every other vehicle I've ever owned (and I've had 16 of them) always had some sort of engineering issue, or mechanical failure that involved worse repairs than what my DeLorean ever demanded.

As an old used car, it's actually been one of the best I've ever owned for reliability. But of course that is the problem with a used car: it requires some work to bring it into tip-top shape.

[mr_maxime]

I haven't driven it as much as my 20K+ suggests, but at my current daily driving rate I will hit 20k+. Hopefully, I get a beater car before then.